Toshiba HD-DVD player $98 at Wal-Mart

[Jeff Kellam]

They are going on sale at Wal-Mart for $98, tomorrow only. Regularly $198.

They also have the 5 free HD-DVDs promotion still in effect.

http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?secti...e117144-lLink1

It dosen't get much cheaper than this.

[Ervin Farkas]

Everyday price at Bestbuy is $99 - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1158323325814

Sold out online but availabe in six stores around my area...

[Michael Jouravlev]

Toshiba is going for the kill. It is about to start a massive sale in the "Store for the masses" to gain broad device install base. It gives away five free titles to lure new users into shiny HD world. It holds off the HD burners in attempt to increase the title base. Right, in my opinion the near absence of HD-DVD burners is a deliberate act from Toshiba and is directed to increase sales of pressed disks instead of allowing people to rent movies on Netflix and then copy them.

Buying $100 player is easy, buying $25 titles is relatively easy too, just recall for how much the DVDs were sold for 10 years ago. For the same money as a Blu-Ray player alone one can get an HD-DVD player and a dozen of titles. This year's Thanksgiving and Christmas sale should be the tipping point in the battle and I am going to bet my $100 on HD-DVD. I would prefer proper 1080p output, but for a hundred bucks I can suck it up.

In the worst case -- that is if Toshiba loses -- HD-DVD owners will remain with equipment that plays SD DVDs. Not a huge loss considering that decent DVD players are sold in $70-150 range anyway. Wal-mart, here I come!

P.S. I would prefer the XA2 with the amazing Reon chip for $300, really.

[Jeff Kellam]

Well, I managed to get the last two of them after going to three stores.

The first stores were out by 8:20 and 8:45 am. They only had about 15 per store. There are about 4,000 WM stores, so 60,000 HD-DVD players sold today. Not really that many in the scheme of HD.

The $14.00 HD-DVD selection was not that great either.

Bottom line: My parents and brother will at least see video of the kids in glorious HD!

Note to Michael:
Im not sure I would go for the XA2 with the next generation Toshiba players already out like the 30 & 35. I hear the 30 & 35 are a little faster in bootup/startup, but still not like a conventional DVD player. The slow startup is the main shock for a new HD player owner (of any variety).

Also about upscaling, current DRM in Toshiba firmware ver. 2.5 will not allow upscaling past 480P on standard DVDs with a certain (not sure which) DRM protection scheme (which is almost all of them). I have young kids so I backup copy their DVDs, which removes the protection, and they then upscale on my A20 to a beautiful 1080i.